To think the breast is best strategy is all wrong

[SheepOrWine]

Just back from the health visitor clinic where I was at in front of an entire wall (no exaggeration) telling me why breast is best. Apparently for one young woman it was the best decision she EVER made. This morning I read about another study which "proves" that breast is best (presumably because the many, many existing studies on this are not enough and they needed another one?) At my NHS antenatal breastfeeding class, more than half of the allocated time was dedicated to the benefits of breastfeeding.

Has anyone ever been persuaded to breastfeed by a poster or a news article? Is there anyone out there who seriously has not yet heard the "breast is best" message? Does the NHS just think women are a bit stupid but if you tell them to do something enough times they will do it?

Wouldn't this money be better spent on helping those women who want to breastfeed to do so successfully? Three months ago I was on a postnatal ward with DD where I received conflicting and often incorrect breastfeeding advice. Every time I buzzed for support a frazzled looking HCA or midwife would come and glance at the latch say "yeah that's fine" and walk off. I asked four times to see the breastfeeding advisor but she never arrived. I was discharged without anyone observing a feed.

8 weeks on I gave up breastfeeding as I just had enough of all the various problems I was having with it and for which I was completely unprepared. Before I had DD the posters were useless as like most women, I already knew I wanted to try to breastfeed. And now, post-breastfeeding, all these posters do is just make me feel guilty. What a waste of money.

rincenoir

Slightly off topic - how did you manage to keep it from your family that you were still BF'ing your toddler? My DS is 2yrs 5m and still BF and my family would be absolutely horrified if they knew!!

When I'm with my family and I have DS if he starts asking for "mummy milk" I have to try and distract him and hope that nobody else heard him say it.

I don't know I'm so bothered about what their reaction would be but I still don't want them to know. It's strange isn't it.

Please don't feel ashamed of bfeeding your toddlers, it's totally normal and if it's not a problem for you it shouldn't be a problem with anyone else!

My DS doesn't seem to find comfort in boob so I think he might wean off it early and that makes me very sad v

"While I know that this exact product will be more expensive than making bottles up from powder I am absolutely disgusted at the blatant profiteering"

Wyeth, Nestle, Milupa et al are a shower of cunts.

Which is just one of the reasons some of us don't want to buy their products, despite the almost universal chorus of 'formula feeding is fine!' on mumsnet.

They must run their grubby little hands in glee at the fact that it's become massively politically incorrect to publicly voice any negative opinions or concerns about their products.

I wasn't ashamed of breastfeeding my toddler, just didn't want to have to justify it every time it came up in conversation!

Writer I live in a different country to my family so don't see them that often! My parents and PIL knew as they visited regularly. My mother constantly just made comments like "she is too old for that" and "she'll be dragging out of you at the school gate" nonsense which I ignored. Otherwise a few months ago I got very fed up with DD constantly looking for milk and pulling at my top/grabbing by nipples so I put strict limits in place- and only fed her in the bedroom morning and evening. When she toilet trained a few weeks ago she stopped altogether- I had missed a few evenings in a row due to work/other plans. She was dry by night almost immediately so started getting up to use potty instead of coming into bed for milk and missed a few mornings. She hasn't looked for milk in a week now. I was ready to stop but am strangely sad now- she was completely breast obsessed, and yet stopped without much of a battle fairly quickly.

Haven't you contradicted yourself maybe? Never ever seen a bf group talk about sleep training but yet part of an LLL group that allows discussion of sleep training?

If you were looking for someone to say it's ok to sleep train I can see why you wouldn't get that response. It's totally the parents choice to sleep train, it's not for other people to say oh go on its OK.

Um actually it would be nice for women to be supportive if someone is getting fuck all sleep instead of telling them it's abusive to sleep train and they should just co sleep instead

I did contradict myself a bit though yes, in all honesty I had forgotten LLL - my mind was on CIBII and Breastfeeding Yummy Mummies. Who when I posted saying I was near suicidal from lack of sleep simply said what did I expect while bfeeding and shoved Sarah Ockwell Sleep articles in my face.

If I had believed them I would have switched to formula. But I have learned it is possible to bfeed and still get sleep.

I've seen lots of BF support groups recommend The No Cry Sleep Solution, which has some gentle forms of sleep training.

Also many people recommending Dr. Jay Gordon's nightweaning method, which involves crying and denying the child the thing they want (breastfeeding). This is considered a "gentle" form of sleep training.

Yes they do but unfortunately gentle methods don't work for all babies.

Like mine. He would get increasingly more irate the more contact you had with him. It was making him and us fucking miserable. Controlled crying transformed our lives and his. Within 2 nights he was a different baby. Much happier, much more smiley. And still feeding like a champ.

"Follow your instincts" and "all babies are different" apparently only apply to certain things though

I've not ever seen Jay Gordon mentioned so can't comment on that.

DS1 (nearly 4) would still be breastfeeding now if it weren't for Dr Jay. Which would be fine, except that I'm one of those women who can't conceive whilst breastfeeding even the tiniest amount, and I was desperate to fall pregnant again. I forced him to give up his final feed when he was 2.8 (not easy) and DS2 was conceived the next cycle.

I'd be happy to feed DS2 until he gave up of his own accord (despite PIL making lemon faces) but even at 3 months I can tell he's not as fussed about BF as DS1 was.

Warning yokouhoh, that could change! DD never acted as fussed, was far easier early on (slept loads) and took a bottle of EBM with little trouble (yey!) but is now all about the boobs despite drinking tonnes of cows milk . . . Gonna try to instigate weaning next month

To respond to other posters re BF a toddler . . . I completely agree that the our culture is pretty shaming towards it and that's such a shame as if it was seen more often & as more normal more people would see that you can carry on post 6/12 months and that's a good thing. It would also help people to see how easy BF can be once established. I never thought I'd feed a toddler, thought it was weird til I went to a wonderful support group where the lovely women running it who were totally normal and non judgey were feeding toddlers and made it seem less weird. I am open about it with family & most close friends but find it awkward in some situations, including amongst some friends with kids where I've never seen anyone apart from me feed in their company. At a few parties / family events They have asked me if I want to go elsewhere / somewhere to feed (in v duff circumstances, when feeding newborn and on other occasions with bigger baby or toddler). I usually refuse - I don't want to have to disappear, I want to chat to my friends! Few of these friends BF, and I cannot help but think that the perception you have to do it somewhere apart away from the party may have contributed - in my book, to carry with BF it's essential for you to be able to continue with your life in terms of socialising etc which means feeding in company.

I would think that LLL are far more representative of 'normal' breastfeeders than BYM or CIBII. They have been around much longer for a start. The trouble is when people take a group like BYM to be representative of The One True Way.

It's just a group. Run by lovely women who give their time freely to help others. But still just a FB group not a cult

I'm a member of 5 breastfeeding groups. 3 are quite AP - no discussion of controlled crying, slings discussed frequently etc. The other 2 are more do whatever you want, we just want to support breastfeeding.

To the poster who mentioned the NHS not having money for milk for newborns who are FF. So mums have to provide it.

That is a very dangerous road for people to accept. Newborns are hospital patients exactly the same as any other patient. What other hospital ward is it acceptable to say "sorry but we can't afford to feed you, you'll have to get someone else to bring you dinner". Is it going to become mainstream that hospital patients don't get fed because its acceptable to do it to babies?

Next it will be children's wards, oh we don't need to feed babies so we won't feed weaning babies, then we don't feed toddlers because they are fussy. And before we know where we are nobody in hospital will have any food.

Maybe hospitals could offer an NHS 'own brand' generic formula for women who can't or won't give their babies their own milk. That would prevent there being a depressing scenario where the NHS is dishing out millions of £££ to Wyeth and Nestle while mothers struggle to breastfeed because there isn't enough money to pay for midwives to support them on the postnatal wards.

MrEBear
They also don't provide nappies but will provide sanitary towels for adult patients. I think the difference is you know a baby will need feeding, you have time to prepare. At the end of the day, the NHS is so skint that the issue we are discussing (lack of staff and support) is happening which I think is a lot more scary than having to bring in my own formula. If we can't afford to properly staff wards how can we take on the extra burden of providing formula?

That is a very dangerous road for people to accept. Newborns are hospital patients exactly the same as any other patient
That's what I thought.

Logically thinking as well you would think that the NHS should be able to purchase the required milk in bulk and therefore should at least be able to supply it at a much cheaper price than the retail price.

However it is a well-known fact that the NHS actually pays well over the odds for a lot of its supplies as this article regarding e-cigarettes claims -
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3466652/E-cigarette-rip-cost-NHS-dear-Cartridges-costing-just-4p-make-sold-1-50-each.html

They also don't provide nappies but will provide sanitary towels for adult patients. I think the difference is you know a baby will need feeding, you have time to prepare. At the end of the day, the NHS is so skint that the issue we are discussing (lack of staff and support) is happening which I think is a lot more scary than having to bring in my own formula. If we can't afford to properly staff wards how can we take on the extra burden of providing formula?

But a person doesn't necessarily have time to prepare. My baby was born unexpectedly at 34w + 2 and I ended up going to emergency theatre on my own for 3 hours after. My DP was left to feed our baby with formula provided by the NHS. What the feck did you expect my baby to do in those circumstances - go hungry because I didn't prepare for such an unexpected turn of events?

Do hospitals refuse to provide formula milk for preterm babies when the mother or baby is unable to breastfeed and donor breastmilk isn't available?

One of the problems I had was conflicting midwives. I had four different midwives at my home and they all contradicted each other. One time I asked whether my son was comfort eating and what to do in those circumstances. I was told to give him a dummy. Another midwife came round and told me no, never give a newborn a dummy! All it did was confuse me.

Of course they provide milk until you have a suitable time to send someone out and get some, but they can't be relied on to feed every single baby for the duration of the stay
They fed my own first baby cup formula until I had chance to get some. Don't know why you're jumping down my throat Potato

Not what your original post stated Gruffalo not am I jumping down your throat.

Where should the NHS draw the line anyway? Parents will know when there children are wing admitted to hospital so should bring pre-prepared food from home onto the children's ward 3 times a day? Relatives should bring picnics family members on the general ward?

I think it's a far from perfect system Potato but I'll state again "If we can't afford to properly staff wards how can we take on the extra burden of providing formula?"
If you actually read my posts properly I was clear to say EVERY baby as of course there will be exceptions that the NHS has supplies for.

Of course there's always the argument that given how cash strapped the NHS is it should only provide help and resources when normal physiology (eg, walking or lactating) fails, not when people choose not to engage in normal physiological processes. It's a health service after all.

Exactly my point mini, I wasn't campaigning against formula being provided I was simply answering a question about how they do it in my trust. There will always be people that need formula immediately like people who can't breastfeed or have no time to buy some in advance and there will always be emergency stores for those but they can't feed every single baby.